by Mike Safe
‘Look, from a publishing point of view, nothing’s one hundred per cent right or wrong in these situations. You can only go with the brief you’ve been given – but you can still ask him.’
After finishing the call, Harcourt knew he needed to talk to Vargas – and sooner rather than later. But how do you contact someone on a small and all-but-uninhabited island in the middle of the world’s biggest ocean? Satellite phone? Email? Carrier pigeon? He had no idea and no phone numbers or email addresses to try.
He went to his cluttered desk and after searching found the business card Vinnie had given him at their Montacue Publishing meeting. Now coffee stained and bent, it was buried under a pile of newspapers and miscellaneous CDs. He rang the mobile number on it but got only Vinnie’s Euro-Aussie voice saying to leave a name and number, which he did.
He decided to go down the street and join Jack and Randy Wayne. As he searched around for his sneakers, finally locating them under the kitchen table, his phone rang. It was Carpark.
‘Hey, handsome, you look real good on page three today,’ he hooted. ‘Heroic daddy saves daughter in distress, he, ha, ha. That Silas is a big lump of a thing. Lucky you got him with the first shot, eh?’
‘Yeah, he probably would have mashed me otherwise.’
The talk went on like this for a minute or so before they agreed to meet up with Jack and Randy Wayne.
‘Okay, I’m just around the corner from them,’ said Carpark. ‘I’ve been to yet another breakfast meeting on this real estate deal. It’s going to be the death of me if I don’t get it done soon. Lots of funny money going in all sorts of directions – but none of it into my pocket unfortunately. I’ll see you shortly.’ And with that he cut the call.
While Harcourt pulled on his sneakers, his phone rang again. This time it was Vinnie congratulating him on scoring the book. ‘See, I told you Mike was running this one. I think our pushy friend Miss Montacue Publishing understands that now.’
Harcourt thanked him and said, ‘Look, Vinnie, I need to speak to Mike if he’s available. Amanda told me he’s on his island in Fiji.’
‘Well, yeah, he’s there with a few people and so that might be a bit problematic at the moment. Film stuff, you know. Anyway, what’s this about?’
‘Something I need to check out with him from a long time ago … The Woodrell brothers, Tommy and Phil.’
‘Who?’
‘The Woodrells. Mike knew them back in the sixties. You remember, Tommy drowned down the coast and Mike was with him at the time and afterwards there was some stuff with Phil. You were involved in some of that, or so I’m led to believe.’
Vinnie was quiet for a moment. ‘Oh, yeah. The Woodrells. That was way back.’ He paused. ‘Listen, why don’t we get together, face to face, and you can fill me in.’
‘Sure. When?’
‘Why not now?’ Vinnie named a well-known inner suburban Italian coffee and pasta joint only fifteen minutes’ drive away. ‘See you there in twenty.’
On his way out the door, Harcourt phoned Carpark. ‘Listen, something’s come up, I gotta go see someone in a hurry.’
‘Who?’
‘It’s complicated. I’ll tell you later.’
‘Big secret, eh?’ Carpark laughed. ‘Well, we’re going to finish up coffee and bullshitting here and the three of us are going over to the Sand Bar to work out these gigs, if they can be worked out. Gettin’ the old band back together, buddy.’
Twenty minutes later, Harcourt was sitting in a pavement seat outside the Bellissima Roma cafe. Although in a hip part of town, not too far from Darrell Farnsworth’s Rampart Media, for whom he still had a second What Men Want column to write, the Roma was a steadfastly old fashioned joint which, of course, was the key to its ongoing success. Inner-city hipsters like old stuff, thinking they have rediscovered something totally cool and authentic even though it had never gone missing.
As he took his first sip of coffee, a black BMW Seven Series sedan, tinted windows, high polished wax job, whispered its way to an impressive don’t give a damn halt in a no parking zone across the crowded street. Vinnie Vincenso, wearing a dark brown version of the suit that Harcourt remembered from their previous meeting, along with the same perma-tan and tarmac-like shiny hair, exited the car and strolled across the street, gleaming white teeth lighting his way. He shook Harcourt’s hand and ordered an espresso as the Roma’s chubby proprietor, almost as old as Vinnie but not so well equipped in the teeth department, fussed over him. They chatted away in Italian for a minute while Harcourt wondered what skulduggery had gone down around these tables over the decades.
The proprietor left and Vinnie eyed Harcourt directly. ‘So, the Woodrells, a blast from the very distant past. What’s this about?’
Harcourt told him Flipper Woodrell’s story from beginning to end, as told to him. Vinnie said nothing through it all, taking an occasional sip from his espresso, his expression unfathomable throughout.
When Harcourt finished, Vinnie remained silent for a moment before replying.
The drowning of Tommy Woodrell, as far as he remembered, had been a ‘terrible accident, two kids doing something stupid, putting themselves in a totally dangerous situation, but an accident just the same.’ Phil Woodrell’s ‘ravings about pills, hold ups and hotwired cars sounded like something a revenging brother would dream up.’ This was the first time Vinnie had heard such claims – Mike back then had been ‘a bit of a wild kid’ but had never mentioned a word of it to him or to his late father ‘who would have told me for sure.’ Yes, he had given Phil an amount of money, he couldn’t remember how much, in the football club car park but that had been done ‘as no more than a gesture of good faith from Mike’s father who knew the Woodrell family was doing it hard.’ And if there had ever been any threat from Phil Woodrell against Mike, he’d never heard of it.
‘From what I remember, and that’s not much, the guy’s football career wasn’t going too well. When I got around to checking him out, I have a thought of there being gossip about him being a hothead who drank too much and got into fights in bars and as well he was struggling to make the team – but, anyway, I’m Italian and what the hell do I know about rugby league? I was a round ball game guy back then, wog ball as you Anglos used to call it. Still am. Like I say, the money was a goodwill gesture and at that meeting I can tell you I never said anything to him about it being a payoff to shut him up or keep him away from Mike, especially over claims of robberies and such rubbish that I haven’t heard of until now, decades later. It’s all a long time gone, but Mr Woodrell should be careful about what he goes around saying.’ Vinnie took a final sip of his espresso. ‘So what does this guy’s ravings have to do with Mike after all these years?’
‘Well, I need to talk to him about that if I’m to do the book …’
‘So you want to put this stuff, highly imagined bullshit it would seem, in Mike’s book?’
‘I didn’t say that, but I need to talk to Mike about what Phil Woodrell told me.’
‘And exactly how did you and Phil Woodrell come together so he could spin you these stories?’
‘That’s a long story in itself.’ Harcourt returned Vinnie’s gaze. ‘Please, Vinnie, I’m being straight up here. I need to talk to Mike.’
Vinnie looked away. Harcourt could tell he wasn’t impressed. ‘All I can do is let him know – can’t promise anything more than that.’
‘So you can get on to him in Fiji?’
‘Of course I can – and then I’ll get back to you. That’s all I can do at this stage.’
Vinnie stood and dropped a twenty-dollar note on the table. ‘Here, have another coffee. It’s nice here, ain’t it? Us old wogs appreciate the finer things in life. They make the world a more agreeable place.’
With that, he set a sprightly pace back to the BMW and eased inside. The tinted driver’s window came down and he called across the street. ‘Hey, top picture in the newspaper today. Always good to see a father looking out for his kid.’ W
ith that, the black car glided away.
Thirty minutes later Harcourt reached the locked front door of the Sand Bar. Live music, a little shambolic and not quite on the beat, echoed from inside. Carpark’s drumming, like the man himself, could get a little ahead of itself at times. After a minute or so, the racket ground to a shuddering halt and Harcourt, now that he could be heard, thumped on the door. Randy Wayne, wearing one of his snap-buttoned shirts, a pair of cowboy boots and somewhat out of place Nike basketball shorts, his Fender Stratocaster hanging around his neck, pulled the door bolt back and let him in.
‘Look at you,’ said Harcourt. ‘Nice outfit even if it’s a bit out of sync, a bit like whatever you guys were just trying to play.’
‘Hmm, yeah, we have some work to do. That was one of Jack’s Solar Sons’ songs which you obviously didn’t recognise.’
‘Err, no, not really.’
‘Yeah, well, then I guess I should amend that to us having a real, real lot of work to do.’
For the next two and a half hours they worked their way through a bunch of Solar Sons’ songs. Jack had roughed up some chord charts and Harcourt, who was at least reasonably familiar with most of them, played Randy Wayne’s back-up electric, a battered Fender Telecaster, which was similar to his own. Buzzy Blair, Randy Wayne’s relief barman, was on bass while Carpark played the bits and pieces drum kit that was kept set up on the Sand Bar stage. Buzzy and Carpark eventually found their rhythmic groove as they worked their way through the songs.
Jack played his plugged-in Martin D-42 acoustic, its now infamous heavyweight case that had felled Silas Korg the previous afternoon off to one side. His voice was strong and he played a fluid rhythm while Randy Wayne provided his usual consummate lead work as well as filling in on harmonies. Harcourt at first felt surplus to requirements, the proverbial ash tray on a motorbike, as he strummed along in the background, but as the playing warmed up he started throwing in some harmonies and the occasional fill of his own. Towards the end of the workout and to Harcourt’s pleasant surprise Jack suggested they try ‘Deeper Blue’. After deciding on a key, working out the chords and with Carpark and Buzzy providing an easy rhythm, they managed to play it more or less through on the first go, with father and son providing harmonies while Randy Wayne came up with a mellow lead break more or less like the one they had originally sent to Jack.
Sly bugger, thought Harcourt of Randy Wayne. He remembered how his friend had originally dissed the song as soft surfie mush, but the truth was his dexterous fingers could sweeten any lemon of a song as required.
‘Well, that went kinda okay,’ Randy Wayne said. ‘If we can work up fifteen or so of Jack’s songs with him out front that will be about right. We can open with a Riders set, maybe seven or eight songs that we already have down, before Jack comes on and that will give us a night – and sell a goddamn thousand or two Lone Star brews while we’re at it.’
‘That’s what I like about you, Randy Wayne,’ said Carpark. ‘You’re a man who always thinks of the bottom line.’
‘Better to be bottom-lining than flat-lining. Now you boys can have a Lone Star or two on the house.’
They agreed they’d need another three or so sessions to get it more or less together for the shows. They were looking to do two nights, maybe three if the response was good enough.
Late that afternoon Harcourt met Burk and Gordy Stone at their regular haunt, the Dog and Whistle. Bloody hell, he thought, his second drinking session for the day, but he was keen to offer some solace, for what it was worth, to the retrenched Gordy. Burk was eager to hear about his meeting with the all but forgotten footballer.
Firstly, he received congratulations on scoring the Vargas book.
‘Thanks for that,’ he said. ‘It’s nice to be wanted, but there’s still a few bridges to cross.’
He filled them in on Flipper Woodrell’s claims and Burk and Gordy agreed he had no option but to raise them with Vargas. ‘It might now be a media world of ten-second attention spans and any old rubbish, but you’ve at least got to lay it on him,’ said Burk. ‘What you do after his response is up to you.’
Gordy had his own good news. An old newspaper crony had phoned him that afternoon from Singapore. The guy now held a management job on Singapore’s The Straits Times, the leading English-language newspaper up there. He’d already heard about Gordy’s situation and wanted him to know there were senior editorial positions going on both the main paper and a daily tabloid they published if he was interested. Singaporeans still liked their newspapers, at least more than Australians did, it seemed.
‘I’m seriously thinking about it,’ Gordy said. ‘The money’s okay, it’s a total change of scenery, and they’ll need me in a hurry.’
‘As long as you don’t publish anything provocative that pisses off their government,’ quipped Burk.
‘Well, if that happens we could always take a cheap holiday up there and visit him in jail,’ said Harcourt.
‘The last thing I’d be doing is looking to upset anybody,’ said Gordy. ‘At this stage of life I see myself more in the Somerset Maugham role, sitting round the Raffles Hotel on a sultry summer evening knocking back gin slings and watching the pretty girls go by. That’s more my go now.’
‘Gordy, you know Maugham was gay,’ said Harcourt.
‘Not that there’s anything wrong with that,’ added Burk.
‘Yeah, well, and somehow the Dog and Whistle doesn’t quite conjure up images of Raffles as the sun sets, of Maugham being gay or anything else for that matter,’ said Gordy, looking around the noisy bar before finishing off a glass of cheap red. He went on to confide that he planned to end his relationship with his fashionista girlfriend Sandy. ‘I can’t keep up with her anymore, not that I want to if I’m totally honest ‘ His severance money would pay for his son Jasper’s looming school trip to Europe, thereby getting one of his ex-wives off his back and would allow him to settle his string of debts. ‘If I go to Singapore, I’ll be going single, starting over in all sorts of ways.’
‘What’s the line from that Cold Chisel song “Khe Sahn”?’ asked Burk. ‘“Gonna hit some Hong Kong mattress all night long”.’
Harcourt laughed. ‘He’s going to Singapore, not Hong Kong.’
‘Hey, never mind the geography, it’s the sentiment that counts,’ said Burk.
‘Jeez, you guys never let up,’ said Gordy.
That night as Harcourt, Tess and Jack ate a late dinner Kirsten phoned. Tess put the call on speaker.
‘I got the TV job,’ she said. ‘It’s all a bit of a whirl – five nights a week, Monday to Friday, the show starts in a few weeks. I’ll be co-host a couple of nights and do interviews – there’s a lot to learn in a hurry. I can keep my magazine editorship and so it’s going to be super mad busy. But the money’s good, really good – TV pays heaps more than poor old print now, but that’s always been the case, I guess.’
‘That’s wonderful,’ said Tess. ‘You’ve got to go with it when the chance comes. I’m happy for you, Kirsten – we all are.’ She was back to being the good girl apparently.
‘Oh, and there’s something else,’ said Kirsten. She told them to check the internet and go to the New York Times’ arts section. Jack looked it up on his phone. The lead item was an interview with Edmund Harrison, no doubt in response to his Australian adventures, literary and otherwise. The large photograph accompanying the article was of a beaming Harrison striding along a New York street on what looked to be a blustery but bright day with an equally smiling woman by his side, classically beautiful and upmarket sophisticated in that about forty sort of way, long auburn hair brought alive by the wind funnelling through the canyon of high-rises.
Harcourt thought she looked familiar, but he couldn’t place her.
Tess could. ‘Oh, that’s Meryl McCann.’
‘Who’s Meryl McCann?’ asked Jack.
‘She’s an author,’ said Tess. ‘Had four bestsellers so far, sort of edgy. Women love her.’
‘Think Sex In the City with literary ambitions and occasional full frontal disclosure,’ said Harcourt who had actually read one of McCann’s books.
‘Oh, she’s better than that,’ said Tess. ‘There’s more to her …’
‘Sure is,’ echoed Kirsten’s voice. ‘She’s also Ed’s former live-in girlfriend of a few years back. Looks as if they might be rekindling that chapter of their lives without too much of a problem.’
‘Hey, Kirsto, I thought he wanted you to go to the States with him,’ said Jack.
‘He did. But I had so much stuff to get sorted here, including the TV thing and … well, it’s a long flight from Sydney to New York and maybe on the way he changed his mind. Who knows?’
She hardly sounds heartbroken, thought Harcourt. He looked at Tess, who could only manage an oddly bemused smile.
Harcourt decided to try his luck. ‘When the locals back here pick up on this you’ll probably find yourself back in the gossip pages and being talked about on breakfast TV.’
Kirsten laughed. ‘That’ll be me – the spurned younger lover.’ The phone went quiet for a moment. ‘Anyway, if that happens it will all be grist for the proverbial mill when it comes to building a profile for the TV show.’
Clearly, thought Harcourt, Kirsten was anything but heartbroken. Tess was now smiling in an even more bewildered way.
‘Oh, and there’s another something else,’ said Kirsten. ‘Silas called me this afternoon and said he’s going to London. You know I told you he’s got money market contacts there and he’s sure he can get a start somewhere pretty well straight away. He was totally matter of fact about it, a complete change from his carry on at the airport.’ She paused for a moment and then sighed. ‘So that’s it for him and me.’
Her old school friend was happy to have her stay until Silas vacated the inner city apartment they’d shared. ‘I’m not sure when he’ll go, but he made it clear it will be as soon as possible. What happened between Ed and me is like a loss of face for him as much as anything else and so now he gets a step ahead again when he heads off to London. Giving me the big goodbye on the phone, not even saying it to my face is another point to him. But, anyway, like I said, we’d pretty much run our race together.’